How to get to know your roommate before you arrive

March 13th, 2014 | Shannyn Wong

Ahh–the dreaded roommate issue. I think just about every person has nightmares about their first college roommate before they actually meet in person. You often hear horror stories about roommates gone bad, but some of the nightmares can be prevented by taking a few simple steps.

You typically find out who your roommate is about a month before classes start and you see some basic contact information. The best advice I can give to help ease some of the anxiety of living with someone new is to take the time to get to know them. This can be through Facebook, email or texting.

When I got my first roommate, I emailed her and introduced myself. We exchanged several emails telling the other person about ourselves and what we had been up to over the summer. This is a great way to start connecting with your roommate and getting to know them and some of their interests.

One of the easiest ways to connect with your new roommate is through Facebook. You can message back and forth and get to know them on a little bit of a deeper level. You can even play investigator and look at some of their pictures and past activities to get a feel for what they are interested in and how it may be living with them.

As an RA, I try to set up a floor Facebook page once I know who is all on my floor. This helps to connect roommates if they haven’t already connected and lets my girls start getting to know the people who will live on the same floor as them.

Doing some of these things will help ease the nerves and anxiety about meeting your new roommate, and it will hopefully build anticipation for when you meet them in person. I loved getting to know my roommate through emails and Facebook so that I had some background knowledge on her and so that we could see what we had in common. Thankfully, none of my roommate nightmares came true and we got along great. She’s even one of my best friends today!

About Evangel

Evangel is an accredited, liberal arts university with more than 100 academic programs on the cutting edge of today's professional fields. Our commitment to the integration of faith, learning and life attracts students from a wide variety of Christian denominational backgrounds who have a strong commitment to academics with a desire to combine their Christian faith with every aspect of their lives.